Sunday, February 16, 2014

US pulls plug on latest Ukraine "revolution"

The release of the Nuland-Pyatt recordings a week ago took the American wind out of the sails of Ukraine's opposition. Things suddenly went very quiet very fast. Today the protesters peacefully left the government buildings they had occupied for months.

The think tank here at Falling Downs was initially perturbed at the lack of public outrage over the Nuland-Pyatt revelations. After all, here we had the US ambassador to the country and the number two in the State Department discussing who would be the next leader of Ukraine as casually as they might choose a wine for dinner.

And while there was little public reaction, obviously a great deal has happened behind the scenes. After that tape was leaked to the public any opposition government would have been forever tainted by accusations of being stooges for America.

It also caused more observers to look a little more closely at who exactly comprises that Ukraine opposition, and the closer you looked the more uncomfortable even folks in Kerry's State Department must have become. You don't have to dig too deep to find a vast swath of reactionary extremism among that opposition.

While it may be amusing for the beltway crowd to flirt with those folks just for the sake of making trouble for Putin, they wouldn't exactly want to stand accused of bringing a cabal of neo-nazis to power in Ukraine.

Does this mean the US will stop with its campaign of "democracy promotion" and leave Ukraine politics to Ukrainians? After all, they have now lost two revolutions within ten years.

Of course they cannot stop interfering. Ukraine is the biggest prize of the post-Soviet era. Just look at a map. Having the Ukraine in the US fold would be the prize of prizes.